… Easter week itself ought not be
the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be
an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even
before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it
any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we
don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it
exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much
notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to
forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long overdue that we took a hard look at
how we keep Easter in Church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the
system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time
to wake up. . . .
In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up,
Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again-
well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of
course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the ground ivy
may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s Lent for you. But
you don’t want simply to turn the garden back into a neat bed of blank earth.
Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary
means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to
flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean
planting, watering and training up things in your life (personal and corporate)
that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in
due course bearing fruit. The forty days of Easter season, until ascension, ought
to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or
venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. . . .
if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new
possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might help you
wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about.
Tom Wright in Surprised by Hope
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